Mikhail Gorbachev: Memoirs (Paperback)

For those readers who don't have such a deep political interest, especially readers who are unfamiliar about the Soviet Union and Communist Party structures it could be quite difficult read. Differentiating between a Congress, conference, plenum, oblast, kraikom, gorkom etc can be difficult. While Gorbachev also makes long points on economic reforms both firstly in his home region of Stavropol and then the whole of the Soviet Union, which he himself even admits to be taxing to the reader!

However it's overall fascinating and enjoyable read, the problems emenating from the Brezhnev 'era of stagnation' turbulent times of perestroika and glasnost through to the ending of the cold war and the August 1991 coup. The sharp analytical mind of Gorbachev makes it more understandable to see why the countries of the former Soviet Union are having such problems today.

As with almost all political autobiographies, a certain proportion of the contents are devoted to justifying decisions, opinions and actions of the author. Nevertheless you emerge with the feeling that Gorbachev was that rarest of political species: a true visionary.

In fact you share with him his frustrations as time and again his attempts to move the monolithic Soviet state forward are slowed and even halted by people clinging to the power they had felt was theirs by right.

Later of course Boris Yeltsin (portrayed here very much as an opportunist with a desire for power) and his followers sought to undermine Gorbachev's reforms for the very different reason that they were not moving swiftly enough.

At the end you are left in no doubt of the sincerity with which Gorbachev loves his country and is pained to think of the troubles it has endured. You are also left with the impression that Gorbachev was a man who arrived at the right time and created the platform from which many people regained their freedom and found a place in the world.

For this history will, I believe, judge him to have been a shining light in an otherwise darkened room.

The problem I had with the book was very much one of comprehending what was happening and therefore sustaining interest. Yes the story of Mikhail Gorbachev and the USSR in the latter part of the 20th century is an interesting one, but what I found particularly hard going was the referrals to the various committees, plenums, soviets, and officials involved in running things. At the risk of over-simplifying the complexity of political systems, it seemed to me that one of the biggest difficulties the Soviet Union had in making any kind of progress lay in the incredible levels of bureaucracy with which it organised everything.

The number of times that a committee was formed, or a new department, function, or official role created is almost beyond belief. I found it very hard to work out who was who, what they were meant to be doing and how the whole structure fitted together.

Although this information may be valuable in understanding the USSR and Mikhail Gorbachev it also made the book rather heavy going and not able to sustain my interest for long periods of time.

At the end of the day there is a decision to make if you are thinking of buying this book. You need to weigh up whether the undoubted insight that is provided is worth wading through the rest for. In the end I finished the book, so I guess my own answer would be yes.

Having said that, this is undoubtedly one of the most powerful political biographies I have read. It is the story of a man who, having made it to the top of the world's No. 1 Communist state, decided that that the ideological foundations of that state were wrong. He initiated and steered a revolution from above based on persuasion, respect for the rule of law and rejection of violent methods.

A courageous intellectual, Gorbachev admits he started the reforms without knowing where they would ultimately lead. Those who have read his 1987 book Perestroika, will appreciate that initially he thought that modest reforms designed to promote greater efficiency and accountability were all that was needed. Only with the passage of time did he come to realise that nothing less than a move to a multi-party democracy and adoption of free-market economic principles would do. In other words, rejection of most of what the Soviet Union had stood for.

These memoirs are an account of the roller-coaster ride involved in managing this huge transition, a process which involved continuous manoeuvring to prevent conservative and radical political elements gaining the upper hand. The fact that, ultimately, the radicals got their way in no way diminishes his achievement in carrying the reforms well past the point of no return by the time he left office on Christmas Day, 1991.

The book is much more readable than Perestroika. Indeed, his brisk style (not lost in translation) has one on the edge of one's seat repeatedly. His account of the August 1991 coup is at once convincing and riveting.

A comprehensive list of the major political figures with whom Gorbachev had to deal, with abbreviated CVs, is provided in an Appendix.

All in all, strongly to be recommended. Whatever, the current standing of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, particularly in his own country, anyone who reads this book will have no doubt that it was written by one of the truly great political figures of recent history.